August 23, 2007 Update...

Got some serious sleep last night – from 9 pm to 6 am – so am a new woman today! That’s good, because the old woman would not have made it two more days at work! The weekend is on the horizon now and I can do this!

It is my hope and prayer that Aunt Tod will get home today. The fellow from Maple Creek has to decide she’s healthy enough to return to a residential care community – which is a step below assisted living in the hierarchy of care facilities. People in residential care must be fit and well enough to basically take care of themselves except for medication reminders and perhaps some ambulatory help. Up until now, Aunt Tod has fit neatly into that category. I think she still does, but she’s having some skin tissue breakdown issues because of being in bed so much, and that has to be corrected, or she has to be ambulatory enough and well enough to address them herself, before she can go back to Maple Creek. Please keep her in your prayers. If they boot her from the hospital before Maple Creek will accept her back, she may have to go into rehab care or a nursing home (pretty much the same difference) and she will not like that one bit. She has seen the inside of too many nursing homes during her lifetime as she visited her husband and others and they distress her…

At work today we had a surprise party for one of our production men. Most of us made homemade meals to share and to send home with him, because he’s a bachelor and mentioned that home-cooked meals are the best gift he could imagine – so we invited him to a noon-time "pizza party" (ha ha) so he’d walk in on a full-blown, home-grown food festival – much of which he took home with him. He’s one happy camper and will be for days. (He’ll probably wish he had a birthday every week!)

I’m not a cook, so bought Safeway Signature soups, which are to die for. I bought four cartons of them, so we could eat three of them and send him home with the fourth… I buy them when I have some disposable income. They’re pricey but worth every cent! I also buy an Italian lentil soup at H&R Produce when they carry it. That one might be my favorite… but Cravin’ Crab and Corn at Safeway is a top contender!

Last night Bobbie and I started watching PIPPIN, but I faded before long so we’ll catch the second half tonight. We are also halfway through another of her favorites, A MAJORITY OF ONE, but I faded in the middle of that one three days ago. We’ll finish it off this weekend, I’m sure. It’s good! I just can’t seem to stay alert after about 8 right now… It has been a long three weeks without sufficient rest. I don’t decry a moment of it; it has all been so wonderful! My energy level just is compromised right now because in between all the fun is the workday world five days a week… and that takes energy, too! I bet I’ve lost some weight – a very good thing! We have been so busy chatting and laughing, we eat only when we get hungry… now, there’s a divergence for me – a good divergence! It was that way at the convention, too… It’s all good!

Ashley (shy kitty) is finally coming around and allowing Bobbie to touch and scratch him. He’s a gorgeous cat and everyone wants to pet him the moment they see him, but unfortunately very few visit long enough for him to settle down so they get their chance. It takes days. Bobbie now adopts the "soprano kitty call" in order to entice him over. He won’t approach an alto – it has to be a high-pitched, saccharine-sweet voice or he’s too chicken to risk it. Bobbie’s getting the knack now. Poor gal, has to change her voice modulation to get a cat to come hither! I call that bending over backward to achieve one’s purpose!

There isn’t much more news so guess I will publish this and let you have at it without further ado!