Nice Day.

Today really was a nice day, in both senses.

The first day after Hurricane Bill blew through was still spotty, cloudy by times and a bit drizzly, but today the clouds broke before dawn and the humidity was completely gone. So yeah, the weather was nice. Warm but with the breeze that I always associate with summer days on the Island, so pretty much like any late-August summer day.

The big news is everything that matters, though. In a very real sense today was the first nice day I've had in a long time. I got up with the alarm (well, the second alarm, but everyone's entitled to one free 'snooze' I figure) and Dad wanted to go out to breakfast together. I thought it was perfect because my father and mother-in-law (Hi Julia!) were coming today to visit Mom in the hospital and I was going to ask Dad if he minded putting them up for the night and I'd spend the night at Steve and Brenda's place.

Turns out he was in a sermonizing mood this morning, though, and I guess he wanted an audience because most of the time we were eating breakfast he was lecturing me on one thing or another, usually about his own health taking the occasional detours into the land of what's wrong with all of the doctors in PEI and occasionally going as far afield as how bad the winters are and how he didn't know how he was going to make it through another but how he and his girlfriend were supporting each other through thick and thin and how everyone should always do that. I think it was some sort of back-handed attack on Mom for leaving him again, those seem to come as naturally to him as breathing and I genuinely believe he doesn't even realize he's doing it anymore, but it annoyed me just the same.

Some good did come out of it, though. One of the little verbal cul-de-sacs he wandered down was how he felt bad that he wasn't visiting Mom more in the hospital but that he didn't know if she wanted to see him and how when he was there it really tore at him to see her like that. Before I could talk any more about that he'd wandered off into how Mom's doctor was also responsible for his sister no longer being with us and such, but the little bit of an apology and regret was there all the same and I'm not going to forget it. He does still care about her and it really does hurt him to see her like this, I'm choosing to focus on the nugget of positive in the heaps of junk that he sends out at times like this.

Anyway, I'd been hoping to catch Monica during her rounds this morning but my breakfast with Dad ran long and by the time I made it to Mom's room it was nearly 8:20am and Monica had been come and gone. I was a little pissed, but I decided that there was nothing to do about it and I'd see her tomorrow anyway, but I got a second kick at the can. A little before 9:00am the nurses came to give Mom a shower and I slipped off to grab a coffee from the cafeteria and there was Monica walking down the hall toward me. We talked for a few minutes, she wanted to know my impression of how Mom has been doing and told me what she thought. Basically we both agreed that yesterday and today she's seeming quite a bit better, quite a bit more alert and in much better spirits. When I came in this morning she had been eating some toast with a little strawberry jam on it -- she ended up eating nearly half a slice -- but when Monica was talking to her she had been trying to eat some Rice Krispies too. Granted, she only ate maybe two teaspoons full, but that's awesome right now. Monica said that if she still seemed to be doing this well tomorrow they'd probably try to take her off the IV fluids and see how she does.

Then we started talking about Trish and her plans to get to Summerside. I said that I was sure Trish would want to talk to her but that she probably wouldn't be arriving until Friday afternoon, but before we went much further on that, Monica cut me off and said that she thought Mom would be in fine shape to see her by then. So I took the opportunity to ask again the question I hate asking but that I've at least gotten one honest answer to from her before. How long do you think she has, based on what you're seeing? She gave me the textbook answer, which I didn't really care for, but she tacked on that she thought it might even be a month or two now, which is far better than the pair of weeks she had told me to prepare for late last week.

So that's good too. I came back to the room and spent the next couple of hours with her then Gregory and Zita came in and I slipped out to the bank to deposit the money we got for her furniture into her bank account. I think Mom had expected me to keep the money for her furniture, she had sort of said something about that before when she tried to give it to Gregory for helping her out and he refused to take it. Doesn't matter, though, it's for her stuff, it's hers until she doesn't need it anymore. But the nice thing about that part is I couldn't do the deposit to her account from my bank card so I went in to see a teller. The teller asked my name and I told her and I explained that I was trying to deposit it to my mother's account and I had a joint account with her but I didn't know the number. She asked me my mother's name and I said "Phyllis" and she looked up at me, smiled and said "Well of course it is!" I can't remember her name for the life of me, even though I tried to commit it to my swiss-cheese memory at the time, but she's one of my Mom's friends down at the bank. We spent the next five minutes or so just talking about how she's doing.

I don't even know probably a quarter of the people who know and love my mom here.

Anyway, back at the hospital, Reverend Wilkie had managed to get ethernet run to Mom's room and so I fired up the laptop and the webcam and like magic the skype-fairies brought me a connection to Ryan, my nephew. We didn't get video working and voice was spotty but it was enough for me to know that we would be able to get skype up and running so Mom could talk to them all this afternoon. When I went out for lunch I grabbed a wrap at Subway and came back over to Mom's apartment to use the internet there. After maybe half an hour of farting around Jim (my brother-in-law) and I got it working so we could see and hear each other and we set up a plan for them to contact us as soon as everyone was home.

Another victory in a growing list for the day.

I got back to the hospital and found mom had company again but while we were talking Steve's mother came in to say hi. I know Mom didn't recognize her at first but as soon as she said her name Mom figured it out. She visited for a few minutes and said she had come by to bring me some lunch. I thought she was kidding at first but it turns out she was serious, she was thinking I probably wasn't eating all that well, with all the time I was spending at the hospital -- she's right -- so she brought me a bag full of food, all home-made I think. I'll skip ahead to supper time here briefly and say that I couldn't believe what she had brought me when I opened the bag. Salad, shepherd's pie, a bottle of water, a blueberry muffin, an oatmeal cookie and a fruit salad (I think that's everything, there was a lot in there). I know I'm getting extra emotional here lately but I started misting up a bit while I was heating up the shepherd's pie, just the incredible kindness everyone's offering can be a bit overwhelming at times. I can't thank everyone enough. Anyway, I ended up eating about half the shepherd's pie, the whole salad and the muffin (Actually, Mom even had a bite of the muffin, she said it looked good and after a minute of careful consideration decided to try a taste when I offered it to her) and I'll have the rest for tomorrow.

Okay, so then there was the call with Trish and the kids. It worked exactly as it was supposed to. Well, not exactly but as close to it as I could ever expect. I set up my laptop and logged in to skype and about twenty to five they called us (for the record, I really dislike using the term 'called' for what skype does, it has practically nothing to do with telephone technology, but it's the way they want to describe themselves so I guess they get to name it whatever they like) and Mom spent close to an hour talking to the kids and my sister.

Oh, and if MarkA is reading this, I owe you at least one thank you for all of the compiz-poo you bullied me into learning. With ccsm, it took me no time at all to figure out the hot-keys to smooth scale up the micro-sized skype video window to full screen size so my mom could see them clearly. For the rest of you, don't worry if you have no idea what that paragraph is about, it's basically an in-joke from work.

Anyway, the even better news from that is Trish and Jim have the papers they need and they're leaving tomorrow morning for the Island, they expect to be here on Thursday afternoon / evening. George and Julia told them, too, that if they can make it as far as Fredericton tomorrow, they can stay at the farm. That would be in the suite they built for me to rent when I was living there my first year out of University. It's just one good, heartwarming thing after another today.

So I left the hospital about an hour ago, earlier than I planned tonight but Mom was already tired from the day and her friends Valerie and Libby (the mother of my best friend growing up) were there and I thought I could trust them to not stay too long and I'd let them visit in private. So I came here, to Mom's apartment again, and decided I had to share all of this with you. I don't remember the last day I had like this and I don't want to forget it. These are really the ones I started this blog for in the first place.

Now I think I'll check on Steve and Brenda and see what they're up to and probably bring Bailey another Timbit in a crumpled paper bag.