Doctor Grandma

It is nice to be back home in South Carolina, after 10 days of sleeping in other people’s beds, with other pillows, not in charge of my own things. We spent a week with Al’s parents, which is a good thing. They are getting older and having more physical problems. I watched Grandma Black give herself an insulin shot in the mornings, after fixing us all coffee and breakfast; listened to both of them get frustrated with each other because neither of them can hear what the other one is saying, and saw them both fall asleep in chairs about as soon as they sat down. But heaven forbid, we’re not all out of bed at 6am!! Of course, I didn’t GET out of bed at 6am, so they were constantly waiting for me to finally wake up, around 8-8:30. Grandma has nothing but decaffeinated coffee. She has this wonderful-tasting “Vanilla bean latte” though, and we brought our own teas. They don’t give Xmas presents anymore, but she still had all the cookies, fudge, banana bread and other sweets that the whole family looks forward to. As for me, I get a jar of my favorite “Chex mix” which tastes like none other.

While visiting Wisconsin, we awoke to windows frosted over with ice, since it was 2 degrees F. The weather in Lafayette, though, was the same, and when we awoke here in South Carolina this morning it was reportedly 19 degrees, which is unheard of down here. I walked twice around the pond, and for the first time saw a thin sheet of ice forming around the edges. BUT, the highs will reach into the 40s the rest of the week, and the ice will disappear.

I am depressed thinking of all the work I have to do before classes start next week Wed. But at least I have until next week Wed. . . My husband is upstairs working at his online job this morning.

Traffic on the way home was heavy, no accidents, though we saw a number of people pulled over, some having car problems, some having speeding problems and stopped by the police. We *did* drive 20 or so extra miles and reached the VIRGINIA state line, when doing the detour around the rock slide on Hwy 40, evidently missing the 26E turnoff. That was very frustrating. We had to retrace our drive, and didn’t get home until 11:30pm. Just before reaching the Chapin exit, I finally reached Level 6, in fact going on to Level 7, and beat my grandson Caspian’s score on “Brick breaker” on my cell phone.

Nice to be back home in South Carolina. Today I balance the checkbook, pay off a bill, go pick up our mail which is held at the big Chapin post office, go downtown and turn on the water in our name (since we now “bought” our house), and maybe get a little groceries to make dinner. During this break, we were at least driving through the states of: South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, AND Virginia.