My grandson lost a tooth!
Derek and Nick!
Sunday: Yesterday, I had a wonderful day of doing very little. I went to the hairdresser for a maintenance trim, and got an inverted bob cut, kept it long in the front, but more angled towards a shorter back. After that, we had planned to go to the theater to see The Day the Earth Stood Still, but before we could leave, Liberto got onto the webcam to his sisters in Venezuela, and they happened to mention that the movie was really cheesy, so we changed our minds. I wanted to see Benjamin Button, but it hadn't opened yet. To most people, it's just the latest Brad Pitt movie, but I'm familiar with it as one of F. Scott Fitzgerald's short stories. Years ago, when I was about eight my mother read the story "Benjamin Button" aloud to me one evening in Chicago. She had just read it and thought it fascinating, so she re-read it to me. Later, I read it again myself. The premise of the story is thought-provoking. Whether one begins as an old man or a new baby, it's all the same. We come full circle, as Shakespeare said in "The Seven Ages of Man."
After changing our minds about the movie, we decided to go to Best Buy to buy my Christmas present, a Flip Video Camcorder. I recently borrowed the Flip Video from our school's Media Center and had no end of fun doing movies of the students. I fell in love with it and had to have my own!! While at Best Buy, I saw a super-sized messenger bag with a big shoulder strap that could easily carry, and with some dignity, all the stacks of student papers I carry back and forth every day. I haven't stopped thinking about that bag. I'm tempted to go back tomorrow and buy it while I do some shopping for Liberto.
We also stopped at Office Depot to look for a globe. Paul's current obsession is Earth's time zones, which he researches on the computer continuously. He wanted a globe for Christmas, the better to visualize time zones I guess, so we got one. Meanwhile, predictably, since we'd been walking around, Liberto's back began to act up, and it got worse and worse until he could barely speak, so we drove home, and he stretched out on the couch and took his medications. He's now taking 6 or 8 pills per day. He had his spinal MRI on Friday and will get the results next week. I hope there are some results that can be worked with, rather than the all-too-familiar "we don't-see-anything wrong" response.
This morning, I awoke at 8 a.m.--I'd put the cat outside at 6 a.m. and successfully returned to dreamland. Liberto was still asleep. I didn't know whether he'd taken one of his heavy-duty pain meds before bed last night and may have been having a rare good sleep, so I didn't want to disturb him. I went into the living room to read the paper and drink coffee with the cat snuggled up on my lap. Gus is always so-o-o sweet after spending a few hours outside.
This morning I made progress on my on-going de-cluttering project, throwing away papers from the past semester and straightening up the room where these papers had been taking up space. I have a lot more to do. The house is hard to maintain, with both of us working long hours on weekdays. On weekends, I have papers and lesson plans, while Liberto is even less inclined to do housework now that his back is a problem. Paul mops the kitchen floor, takes out the garbage, does the dishes, and does whatever I ask him to, but I there are more cleaning projects than there are people in the house to do them. Keeping up with the animals is another cleanliness issue. The dog is about 13 now and has been having some health problems. A few weeks ago, I noticed that he was peeing more often, and for the first time, on the carpet if I don't open the back door fast enough. Senility doesn't seem to be a factor, so I suspected a urinary tract infection, and took him to the vets on Wednesday. They took a urine sample (I didn't ask how they managed to get it; they took him for a little walk outside while I remained in the waiting room). The vet called on Friday confirming a UTI but also found some "abnormalities" in his sample, so he has to go back for another test after he finishes his current round of antibiotics. I fear he might be in kidney failure or have something more serious than an ordinary infection.
I talked to Diana this afternoon. Yesterday, she fell down the stairs in her house, and was traumatized by it but relieved to have survived it. As she said, "I'm so pessimistic, that an event like that makes me think about how much worse it could have been." She's all right, but had the wind knocked out her and is in a lot of pain today. She didn't go to a doctor or the hospital because she didn't think it was serious enough to have to pay mega out-of-pocket bucks for x-rays or a visit---her health insurance plan, which she says is pathetic, has a huge deductible. She said she would have sought medical help if her injuries had seemed life-threatening or highly serious. Just about a month ago, she broke her toe, also while at home, and did go to a doctor. A couple hundred bucks later, she was told there was nothing that could be done, just keep the toe straight and it would heal on its own. I sure hope our President-Elect will come up with a viable national health insurance solution. There are millions of people without any access to health care due to lack of insurance and/or the ridiculous costs, and that's simply wrong. Some idiot recently wrote a letter to the editor mocking the idea of universal health care, using as his example Sen. Ted Kennedy. The writer said that if we had universal health care, the Senator would have to wait months to get treatment for his brain tumor instead of receiving care right away under the our wonderful current system. Didn't the writer realize that universal health care would mainly help people whose only other alternative was no care whatsoever? The Kennedy's of the world will always be able to cough up enough cash for private treatment, whether they have health insurance or not.
Tomorrow is the 19th anniversary of my father's death. Readers may remember that I was in Venezuela on the day he died in Vermont. The date of his death is also cousin Carlos' birthday, and I will forever link the two events. On the day,Dec. 22, 1989, twenty minutes before I got the call about Dad, cousin Carlos called the familia's house, returning the familia's calls to him to wish him a happy birthday. Thinking it was Diana with some news, I picked up the phone that morning, and it was Carlos instead of Diana, so I spoke to him for a few minutes, wished him a happy birthday, and then told him I had to get off because I was expecting a call from my sister to get an update on Dad's condition. Paul and Liberto just now tried to call Carlos to wish him a feliz cumpleanos a day in advance, since they'll both be at work tomorrow. I took my mother's death hard too, since I was a young thing, and we also had unfinished business. Her death seemed like such a waste. All her children had lingering feelings of anger, guilt, resentment. With Dad's death, all of us were heartbroken after watching his slow, pathetic decline from a vibrant, youthful, intelligent person into a thin, confused and gray-faced patient in a nursing home.
However, that was 19 years ago, and the grieving has largely passed. Right now, I'm happy that it's Sunday night and I don't have to get ready for class tomorrow. We are just startng to watch Cold Case, so it's time to kick back and relax.
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